wikiHow is a wiki similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are written collaboratively. To create this article, volunteer authors worked to edit and improve it over time.

The wikiHow Tech Team also followed the article's instructions, and validated that they work.
Learn more...

YouTube offers a built-in link shortener that can be extremely helpful because it's simple, short, and you don't need to use another website. Shortening a YouTube video link will make the beginning portion of the link appear like youtu.be/. This wikiHow article will show you how to shorten a YouTube video link.

Steps

1

Go to a YouTube video. This can be done by visiting youtube.com in your web browser and selecting a video or using the top search bar to find one.

2

Click the "Share"/"SHARE" button. Doing so will prompt a box to appear. The new YouTube design will have an all-caps share button under the video towards the right. The old design will place it under the channel name to the left.

3

Set the link to start at a specific timestamp. Check the "Start at:" box and tweak the timestamp. When anyone accesses the video, it'll automatically jump to that timestamp of the video.

4

Finish the process. You can copy the link by clicking the COPY button (new design) or right-clicking it and selecting "Copy" from the context menu.